1. Technical Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the telecommunications field and, in particular, to a cellular communications network and method for improving the speech quality near a border of a cell by dynamically changing the size of the cell.
2. Description of Related Art
In order to improve the radio environment of today's cellular communications networks, many operators utilize automated planning techniques (e.g., Adaptive Frequency Allocation) to assist with frequency planning and cell assignment decisions that improve the speech quality within the network by minimizing interference. The current automated planning techniques are defensively designed and have large safety margins to ensure that “good” speech quality is maintained throughout the entire cellular telecommunications network. Consequently, it is very expensive to use the current automated cell planning techniques to ensure that “good” speech quality is maintained throughout the entire cellular telecommunications network. In addition, the current automated cell planning techniques may increase the already high costs due to the large safety margins by requiring the addition of new cells which may not necessarily be required to improve speech quality.
Moreover, the current automated cell planning techniques use complicated frequency hopping or power control schemes to try and average out or reduce the high interference present within the entire cellular communications network. Unfortunately, none of the current automated cell planning techniques attempt to improve the speech quality near a border of a cell by dynamically changing the size of the cell.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method in a cellular communications network that improves the speech quality near a border of a cell by dynamically increasing or decreasing the size of the cell. There is also a need for a method and cellular communications network that dynamically decreases the size of an interfering cell to increase the speech quality within a cell interfered with by the interfering cell. These and other needs are satisfied by the cellular communications network and method of the present invention.